In fact, research shows that seniors become more tolerant and more open-minded in their later years.

There are a thousand little ways in which our vocabulary is irreducibly liberal. It’s one of the reasons I continue, years later, to be greatly bothered by Stephen Colbert’s bit at the White House correspondents dinner about how “reality has a well-known left-wing bias.” It’s a funny bit. But it obscures the fact that while reality may not have a liberal bias, much of the language we use to describe it does.